Bree Wilson: ‘I will not sit idly by’

Bree Wilson remembers standing outside of a stranger’s home with an infant potty chair and a little green suitcase. She was just 3 years old, and her mother took her into the house and immediately turned around and left.

“I was an abandoned and abused kid,” Bree says. “All those negative traumas in my life made me a better officer.”

Those strangers would turn out to be an aunt and uncle Bree had never met before. And the life that followed would change a vulnerable little girl into a woman with a tough exterior and a big heart.

“I don’t wear a badge to be a superhero. But if things are not right, I will not sit idly by.”

Her life experiences led her to the military, where she served active duty in the army before she returned to York to assemble wheelchair lifts. But she longed for the discipline of her military training and soon discovered that becoming a sheriff’s deputy could be her niche.

She became a police officer in 2000 and has been with West York Borough Police Department since 2008.

On the job, she often draws on her personal insight. Kids and animals are very telling of a situation, she says, even if all seems well on the exterior. And she learns to listen to those that others may overlook.

“Wherever I go, those situations I lived follow me,” she says. “I don’t wear a badge to be a superhero. But if things are not right, I will not sit idly by.”

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